Out in San Francisco, Qualcomm has unveiled the Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064, a seriously souped-up version of the S4 Plus processor found in the HTC One X and Asus Transformer Pad Infinity. Not only does the S4 Pro double the number of cores from two to four, it is also the first Qualcomm SoC with the new Adreno 320 GPU.

In early benchmarks performed by tech sites such as AnandTech and PCMag, the S4 Pro, despite being clocked at the same 1.5GHz, smokes every competitor — except the iPad 3’s A5X. In graphics benchmarks, the new Adreno 320 GPU is twice as fast as its predecessor, the Adreno 225 (found in the S4 Plus). The Adreno 320 still loses out to the A5X’s quad-core PowerVR SGX 543MP4 in most benchmarks, but it beats Tegra 3 and Exynos 4 (Mali 400) comfortably.

In CPU tests, even those that aren’t tailored towards multi-core processors, the S4 Pro is king of the jungle, beating out Intel’s Medfield in the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark. In full-system, multi-core-enabled benchmarks such as Quadrant and Antutu, the quad-core S4 is between 40 and 100% faster than the Tegra 3, Exynos, and the dual-core S4.

To be honest, the results aren’t all that surprising: The dual-core S4 was already giving the quad-core Tegra 3 and Samsung Exynos 4 chips a run for their money — and now, with four cores and the Adreno 320 GPU, Nvidia and Samsung have been left in the dust. For the most part, this is entirely down to the fact that Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 uses the Cortex-A15esque Krait core, which is miles ahead of the Cortex-A9 core used by every other ARM smartphone SoC on the market. Cortex-A15 parts from Nvidia, Samsung, and Texas Instruments are on their way — but not until 2013.

As for when we’ll actually see the Snapdragon S4 Pro on the market, you’ll be able to buy the developer-oriented MDP/T tablet (running Android 4.0) for $1,299 in the next few weeks. As far as consumer-oriented devices go, Samsung is rumored to be preparing an S4-powered Windows RT tablet for an October release. This particular model of the S4 Pro (the APQ8064) doesn’t include a cellular modem, so it’s unlikely that we’ll see it in smartphones — but its baseband-equipped cousin, the MSM8960T, is due out soon.

Curiously, despite a long-running partnership with Qualcomm, Microsoft’s own-brand Surface RT tablet will be powered by Tegra 3 — an SoC that is significantly slower than the quad-core Snapdragon S4. Microsoft might have some issues marketing the Surface RT if Samsung’s tablet is almost twice as fast.

[Image credit: AnandTech]

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The Krait cores are not based on the A15 core from ARM. Qualcomm licenses the ARM instruction set and designs their own cores unlike other SoC companies that license entire cores (e.g.., A9, A15) and put them together with other parts to make SoCs

some_guy_said

Semantics. The Krait core is designed with the functionality and performance in mind specifically to compete against A15 core processors.

http://twitter.com/tarlinian Tarlinian

It’s semantics in the same way saying that an AMD processor has a “Core i5” in it. Yeah, they’re both x86 processors and AMD designs processors to compete with Intel, but they have no shared history. I’m not trying to downplay Qualcomm, but I think it’s important to note that they distinguish themselves by designing their own cores unlike every other vendor that makes ARM SoCs.

some_guy_said

I disagree with your analogy. There’s a difference between saying something is in some way based on something else is a lot different from saying that something IS something else.

It’s more like calling an AMD 5×86 a pentium.

They share the same basic capabilities and instruction set, and are loosely based on the same ideas and markets. The AMD 586 is loosely based on the capabilities of the pentium, even though the architecture is somewhat different.

Your analogy is like saying that the A15 has a Krait core. Notice how it sounds a little more ridiculous?

Furthermore, Sebastian said, “uses the Cortex-A15esque Krait core,” Which he’s saying krait is like the a15 – in this case, referring to the capabilities and speed.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

To be honest, I actually changed it from ‘based’ to ‘esque’. The original edit had ‘esque’, but I lost it somewhere along the line (the original edit had ‘Cortex A9-based’, so I guess something got crossed).

I agree esque is reasonable, but I just think saying “based” gives an awful lot of credit to ARM for something it had nothing to do with.

An Athlon is not “based” on a pentium III, they have completely separate design backgrounds. (AMD chips have not been based on Intel ones since the 486 days.) Just because two chips have roughly the same capabilities does not mean one is based on the other.

http://twitter.com/tarlinian Tarlinian

I agree esque is reasonable, but I just think saying “based” gives an awful lot of credit to ARM for something it had nothing to do with.

An Athlon is not “based” on a pentium III, they have completely separate design backgrounds. (AMD chips have not been based on Intel ones since the 486 days.) Just because two chips have roughly the same capabilities does not mean one is based on the other.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PFMNWRMTPGK7BIRUM7LN4KLKNM curts

Wouldn’t it be better to just say Cortex-A15 compatible instruction set?

http://twitter.com/tarlinian Tarlinian

It’s not the instruction set either. The A15, A9, and Qualcommo cores all use the same ARM instruction set (otherwise you’d need to write different native software for different ARM smartphones), just like most PC processors use the x86-64 instruction set.

Qualcomm is THE ONLY ARM licensee that even bothers to develop their own cores, all the others just build the ARM Stock designs.

Qualcomm are like AMD when they were on their game. Developing their own CPUs that are 100% compatible to ARM designs, like AMD are 100% x86 compatible, and they are usually faster than the product they compete with. The Scorpion Cores were a good 10% faster at the same Clockspeed than Cortex-A8. Krait was developed as a competitor to Cortex-A9, and they do outperform Cortex-A9 quite significantly, Manufacturing problems however delayed introduction, but Krait CPUs are in actual consumer products you can already buy since at least April.

lex

I have the Optumus G with Krait Snapdragon S4PRO and I also have the Samsung Note 2.
Krait in Optimus G beats the quadcoreExynos in Note 2 in EVERY benchmark.
And it also beats A6X in my fiance’s ipad4.
Geekbench:
2285 (Optimus G)
2021 (Note2).
1780(Ipad4).
I love my note2 for its 5.5 display, but when it comes to raw performance Krait is a monster.

KyleRay

Samsung new Exynos slated for release this year w/ Big Little 5 core and Mali 604 with Quad A15. Said to easily beat out Qualcomm’s S4 Quad Krait! ;-P

The quad-core Krait SOC at 1.5 Ghz beats the hell out of the dual-core A5X (tops at 1Ghz) in non-GPU tasks. GPU power is nice but in real-world use, it is secondary to non-GPU computing performance.

lex

I have ipad4 with A6X and i got Samsung Note2 (Samsung quadcore Exynos4), LG Optimus G, Droid DNA and now Nexus4 (all three come with Snapdragon S4 Pro), and Nexus 7 (Nvidia Tegra 3)and Nexus 10(Samsung dualcore A15 Exynos 5250 with Mali604 gpu).
In Geeckbench Nexus 10 smokes everyone at 2881 (highest)/2651(average), second comes Optimus G at 2218. Third Samsung Note2 at 2021, fourth place split Droid DNA and Nexus 4 at 1960/1948 (which is actually weird because Droid DNA is todays king of Quadrant Benchmark (my own phone has runs in 8360, almost 500 over next highest of 7890.belonging to LG Optimus G).
And my ipad 4 with its souped up A6X comes at 1755 on Geeckbech.
I got pics to prove.

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